Simon Says
by rainaftersnowplease
Summary: In a rare fit of selflessness, the Ice King decides to do some good for once. Sugarless Gum within.


**AN:** Written for Snappilier on Tumblr.**  
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Love you guys. Comments, please!

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**Simon Says**

**The Conniving**

You have made it a habit to follow them around. At first, your object was to find a good time to whisk you lovely princess away with you, so you can spend the rest of your life brushing her hair and feeding her grapes. You are unsure if candy people can eat grapes—some of her subjects _are_ topped with fruit. Would it be like eating a penguin for you?

Gunther does _not_ take it well when you lick up his face to see how that would go. He flails his flippers in your face and pecks at your neck through your beard until you release him. Well, he tastes like dust and fish anyway, the naughty boy. Maybe you ought to bathe him more often.

Finn and Jake are your biggest obstacles. That kid is always bouncing around Bubblegum like some annoying little bear-fly-kid. For a little squirt, he's proven to be a real princess blocker. He _has_ to realize that she isn't interested, but even after he gets a new fiery lady friend he continues to orbit the candy castle.

That's just greedy.

Then the fiasco with the Door Lord happens, and you wonder if maybe the reason Princess Bubblegum refuses to appreciate your undying yearning for her is because she already has someone. Or, had, more precisely.

The Vampire Queen you know more in passing than from any actual interaction. She reminds you of a fuzzy, incomplete, fleetingly quiet memory you have—or maybe just a dream—of the you you were before…well, before. Thinking about it makes you readjust your crown. You can't quite call it back all the way. Strange.

In any case, you like her. Not the way you like princesses, no, you have no desire to make her a queen over ice as well as vampires. But her sadness and moping after her friends have recovered their stolen treasures and she is left to return home to solitude, well, you aren't quite sure just _what_ it does, but for the next few days you don't feel much like chasing princesses.

Gunther tries to cheer you up, dancing silently across the ice floor of your bedroom, though he _could_ just be trying to summon something from death world fourteen again.

"Daddy is tired, pumpkin," you tell him. He scowls and you toss dirty socks at him from your bed until one hits him square in the eyes with a _fwhap_ and he waddles blindly out of your room, squawking loudly.

It takes you a bit of effort, but you figure out that maybe you are sad because _she_ is sad. This makes no sense to you. So she is sad over losing Bubblegum. That makes her your romantic arch rival, even more than that poser Finn, and you are _glad_ she and the princess don't get along. It means less competition for you, and that is most obviously cause for celebration.

You don't feel much like celebrating though.

What you _feel_ like, is going to Marceline's cave house with ice cream and the collection of chick empowerment movies that Gunther doesn't know you know he keeps hidden under his nest. You want to make terrible jokes until neither of you can speak for laughing, and maybe she will want to talk, but if not, that would be okay, as long as she knows…

Well, you can't very well do any of that. But maybe there is something else you can do for her. Something more your style.

**The Proud**

You hope, somewhere far from the forefront of your mind, that Finn will not hold it against you that you sent him away today. You need some time to get everything in order again.

Barring that improbability, you at least need to build up the composure not to let on about it.

Nights are hard—you remember vividly how that velvet voice used to vesper you to sleep. Mornings are harder, because you awake alone in the silence absence of her crooning aubade.

Any way you pull the taffy, though, you get the same sticky-sweet mess of her and you together. And just like taffy, it sticks your teeth together tightly in your mouth and demands to be chewed through until it comes apart enough to swallow. This taffy is stale though. It does not yield easily to mastication.

She becomes a ghost after the awkwardness. You notice again how being alone is quiet, so very quiet that your memory played at full volume gives you a headache and a familiar pricking behind the eyes. You don't have any more of those to give over her though.

You are trying to read through the renewed conspicuousness of her head's absence from your lap when the world rends itself apart. Panic grips you like you grip the edge of your mattress to keep you upright. Then you hear the voice.

"Oh Princess _Bubblegum_!" it sings raspingly. "I've come for you, my darling!"

Your terror turns to intense annoyance.

"Come, my bubblegum beauty!" he coaxes. The ice that forms sharply cold over your hands orders the same. "I have a _wonderful_ surprise for you, just wait"—he lifts you and your dress pulls at your shoulders as you scrape over his bony collar—"you're going to be _so _happy. You'll be all '_Ice King, how you get so awesome?_' and I'll say '_Maybe in exchange you guy's will let me stay and_—"

You cannot see his face as you fly, but the _ulp_ he makes as he cuts his words off makes you wonder just what he has in store for you this time. He smells like stale sweat and penguin. When was the last time he did laundry?

Doubtless you'll be locked in that freezing prison cell until someone notices you're gone and finds Finn and Jake to come get you. You should have asked to bring a book, but just as you resign yourself to a cold, boring sojourn in the Ice Palace, the Ice King says something that bubbles in your chest, terrifying and wonderful.

**The Hopeful**

"Marceline!" the Ice King's shrill call fails at first to draw your eyes away from those of the penguin in front of you. Stagnant pools of night stare back at you, _into_ you, and they lift the tiny hairs on the back of your neck like little soldiers in a firing line.

"_Marceline_!" he screeches, the impatient demand of a grouchy toddler.

You press down with fingers and toes in the ice to loft upward and face him, and crash your feet immediately back to the floor when you see just what he meant when he said he had _something that will make you feel better_.

You would recognize the butt underneath that riot of pink over his shoulder anywhere.

He drops her rather unceremoniously to the ice. The impact produces a good solid _thud_, and part of you hopes that hurt.

"Play nice, now, ladies!" he sing-songs. "Come on, Gunther. Let's give our guests a chance to get _settled_."

There is implication in the last word. Maybe the King isn't as clueless as he appears.

She looks at you, but meeting her gaze feels like surrender: awful, glorious surrender. You shuffle, scuff your heels on the frozen floor and jam your hands so forcefully deep into your pockets the seams go taut to the edge of ripping.

"If you wanted to talk, you could have just stopped by," she leans forward, elbows stuck to knees, still seated. A fist pushes one side of her smile up to her cheekbone.

"If I wanted to talk, I would have," the words taste like pennies.

"Of course," she sighs. "So you're going to disappear again."

Surety is the most prominent quality in the statement. Fringed with sadness and something low underneath like the bass line below a beat, but overwhelmingly sure. You would prefer it accusatory.

"Probably," you admit after a bit. She hasn't taken her eyes off you, still smiling in the press of her fist. The feeling of being watched is not one you ever envisioned missing, but then she has always been a big bundle of unexpected, and you want to be angry at her but you like that look of hers, whatever one she's giving, as long as she's looking at you.

"I'll keep missing you," and wow, four words is all it takes to tell you, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that the woman who once turned the world around has been aching to turn it again, if only you'll let her.


End file.
